Science Fiction writers protest Saudi Arabia as possible conference site
We last checked in on Saudi Arabia’s relationship to the greater literary world a little over a year ago. In that story, the mega-talent-agency, Endeavor, had returned the $400 million dollar investment… Read more »
Endeavor talent agency pulls out of partnership with Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi killing
The last time we wrote about Saudi Arabia, we entered through the back door: where the National Enquirer was threatening to publish even more intimate photos of Jeff Bezos than… Read more »
Bezos’s dick pics may have unlocked a back channel of Saudi influence in the U.S.
“The richest man on earth accused the nation’s leading supermarket tabloid publisher of ‘extortion and blackmail’ on Thursday, laying out a theory that brought together international intrigue, White House politics,… Read more »
Liberal media to Máximo Lider: We still just really don’t like you
Fidel Castro did one more seemingly impossible thing this weekend: he died. And he died as he’d lived: while polarizing public discourse, and annoying the living shit out of many, in… Read more »
An update on Egyptian censorship: novelist languishes in prison, while president threatens online satirists
Since February, MobyLives has been following the alarming story of Ahmed Naji, the Egyptian author sentenced to two years in prison for sexually explicit content in his novel, The Use… Read more »
Egyptian court upholds prison sentence for poet convicted of blasphemy
In what is only the latest in the intensifying crackdown on freedom of expression in Egypt, a Cairo misdemeanor court has rejected the appeal of a poet and critic sentenced to three… Read more »
Poet sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia
Last week, a Saudi Arabian court ordered the execution of Ashraf Fayadh, a poet and artist born in Palestine who is now officially stateless, and who is also a member of… Read more »
Saudi Arabian book fair removes “blasphemous” works by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish
The works of revered Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who died in 2008, have been removed from the Riyadh International Book Fair in Saudi Arabia after objections to the “blasphemous” nature of… Read more »
Saudi Kingdom bans the Arabic equivalent of Twilight
The fantasy novel HWJN has been pulled from bookstores in Saudi Arabia this month—not for its hot, wet jinni romance, but rather for its mentions of Ouija boards and other… Read more »